The Real Presence - What Is It? # 5

The Real Presence - What Is It? # 5

Nor ought we to doubt that this special presence was the secret of the fearlessness with which many early Christian martyrs met their deaths, and of the marvelous courage which the Mrian martyrs, such as Bradford, Latimer, and Rogers, displayed at the stake. A peculiar sense of Christ being with them, is the right explanation of all these cases. These men died as they did - because Christ was with them. Nor ought any believer to fear that the same helping presence will be with him - whenever his own times of special need arrives.

This branch of our subject deserves to be pondered well. This spiritual presence of Christ is a real and true thing, though a thing which the children of this world neither know - nor understand. It is precisely one of those matters of which Paul writes, "The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God - for they are foolishness unto him? (1 Cor. 2:14). But for all that, I repeat emphatically, that the spiritual presence of Christ 0 His presence with the hearts and spirits of His own people - is a real and true thing. Let us not doubt it. Let us seek to feel it more and more. The man who feels nothing whatever of it in his own heart's experience, may depend on it that he is not yet in a right state of soul.

III. The last point which I propose to consider is the real BODILY presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Where is it? What ought we to think about it? What ought we to reject, and what ought we to hold fast? This is a branch of my subject on which it is most important to have clear and well-defined views. Whatever the Bible teaches plainly about Christ's bodily presence - it is our duty to hold and believe. What do the Scriptures say about Christ's bodily presence? Let us examine the matter step by step.

(a) There was a bodily presence of our Lord Jesus Christ during the time when He was upon EARTH at His first advent. For thirty-three years, between His birth and His ascension, He was present in a body in this world. In infinite mercy to our souls, the eternal Son of God was pleased to take our nature on Him, and to be miraculously born of a woman, with a body just like our own. He was made like unto us in all things, sin only excepted. Like us He grew from infancy to boyhood, and from boyhood to youth, and from youth to manhood. Like us He ate, and drank, and slept, and hungered, and thirsted, and wept, and felt fatigue and pain. He had a body which was subject to all the conditions of a material body. While, as God, He was in heaven and earth at the same time; as man, His body was only in one place at one time. When He was in Galilee He was not in Judea, and when He was in Capernaum He was not in Jerusalem. In a real, true human body He lived; in a real, true human body He kept the law, and fulfilled all righteousness; and in a real human body He kept bore our sins on the Cross, and made satisfaction for us by His atoning blood. He who died for us on Calvary was perfect man, while at the same time He was perfect God.

This was the first real bodily presence of Jesus Christ. The truth before us is full of unspeakable comfort to all who have in awakened conscience, and know the value of their souls. It is a heart-cheering thought that the "one Mediator between God and man is the man Jesus Christ." He was real man - and so able to be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He was Almighty God - and so able to save to the uttermost, all who come to the Father by Him. The Saviour in whom the laboring and heavy-leaden are invited to trust, is One who had a real body when He was working out our redemption on earth. "By man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. 15:21).

(b) There is a real bodily presence of Jesus Christ in HEAVEN at the right hand of God. This is a deep and mysterious subject, beyond question. What God the Father is, and where He dwells, what the nature of His dwelling-place who is a Spirit - these are high things which we have no comprehension to take in. But where the Bible speaks plainly - it is our duty and our wisdom to believe. When our Lord rose again from the dead, He rose with a real human body - a body which could not be in two places at once - a body of which the angels said, "He is not here - but is risen" (Luke 24:6). In that body, having finished His redeeming work on earth, He ascended visibly into heaven. He took His body with Him, and did not leave it behind, like Elijah's mantle. It was not laid in the grave at last, and did not become dust and ashes in some Syrian village, like the bodies of saints and martyrs. The same body which walked in the streets of Capernaum, and sat in the house of Mary and Martha, and was crucified on Golgotha, and was laid in Joseph's tomb - that same body - after the resurrection glorified undoubtedly - but still real and material - was taken up into heaven, and is there at this very moment.

The doctrine before us is singularly rich in comfort and consolation to all true Christians. That Divine Saviour in heaven, on whom the Gospel tells us to cast the burden of our sinful souls, is not a Being who is Spirit only - but a Being who is man - as well as God. He is One who has taken up to heaven a body like our own; and in that body sits at the right hand of God, to be our Priest and our Advocate, our Representative and our Friend. He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, because He has suffered Himself in the body being tempted. He knows by experience all that the body is liable to -from pain, and weariness, and hunger, and thirst, and work; and has taken to heaven that very body which endured the contradiction of sinners and was nailed to the tree!

(c) There is NO real bodily presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, or in the consecrated elements of bread and wine. This is a point which is a peculiarly painful to discuss, because it has long divided Christians into two parties, and defiled a very solemn subject with sharp controversy. Nevertheless, it is one which cannot possibly be avoided in handling the questions we are considering. Moreover, it is a point of vast importance, and demands very plain speaking.

Those amiable and well-meaning people who imagine that it signifies little, what opinion people hold about Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper - that it is a matter of indifference, and that it all comes to the same thing at last - are totally and entirely mistaken. They have yet to learn that an unscriptural view of the subject may land them at length in a very dangerous heresy. Let us search and see.

My reason for saying that there is no bodily presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, or in the consecrated bread and wine, is simply this: there is no such presence taught anywhere in Holy Scripture. It is a presence that can never honestly and fairly gotten out of the Bible. Let the three accounts of the institution of the Lord's Supper, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the one given by Paul to the Corinthians, be weighed and examined impartially, and I have no doubt as to the result. They teach that the Lord Jesus, in the same night that He was betrayed, took bread, and gave it to His disciples, saying, "Take and eat it; this is My body;" and also took the cup of wine, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood."

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 6)